Newsom’s COVID fibs should face scrutiny with actual data
It’s bad enough that Gov. Gavin Newsom tells politically motivated whoppers about California’s coronavirus success.
It’s appalling that his administration endangers lives by blocking release of data needed to analyze the state’s response.
Lack of transparency has been a Newsom hallmark during the pandemic. Oh sure, we get daily reports from the state Department of Health on the number of cases and deaths. So when the governor claims he’s running “the most robust vaccination program in the country,” we know that’s bogus — that California ranks 43rd of 50 states for the percentage of residents fully vaccinated.
But the more complex questions focus around the administration’s decisions on shutdowns and reopenings. To be sure, Newsom and health officials had to take tough and quick action with little information when the pandemic arrived. But, in the ensuing weeks and months, those decisions should have been publicly tested against the emerging numbers so rules could be adjusted accordingly.
That didn’t happen. Health experts and journalists who sought data to analyze the efficacy of Newsom’s pandemic response were repeatedly blocked. A key obstacle was Newsom’s health secretary, Dr. Mark Ghaly, who champions the governor’s COVID-19 response and hinders outside analysis of its effectiveness.
When health experts from Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC San Francisco and UC San Diego in June filed a formal request for data, Ghaly refused, citing confidentiality. Never mind that the health experts were seeking records without identifying information.
Ghaly’s bogus argument is the same one Alameda County tried to pawn when this news organization sought similar data — an argument that a local judge rejected but that has yet to be challenged for the statewide numbers.
It’s long past time to release the data so that Californians can know whether, for example, the lockdowns were warranted, or essential workers were properly classified and provided adequate health protections.
To pry the statistics loose, state Sen. Steve Glazer, D-Orinda, has introduced Senate Bill 744, which would require counties and the state collect meaningful data and make it publicly available. Legislators should promptly pass it and force the governor to stop giving lip service to transparency.
Expect screaming from county health officials around the state and Ghaly, who will try to hide behind federal privacy requirements to block meaningful analysis of their coronavirus responses. But Glazer’s bill was crafted to ensure that patient privacy would be protected. He and the researchers are seeking release of anonymous data about cases — such as occupation, living conditions, health factors and outcome — without any personal identification.
Why does this data matter? So we can save lives.
“Policymakers and the public are largely flying blind about the spread of the disease, relying on guesswork and intuition when science should be leading the way, and leaving essential workers and vulnerable individuals at greater risk,” according to Glazer’s summary of his bill.
As we’ve come to understand, some of the biggest coronavirus outbreaks have been in lowincome areas, especially Latino households, where people are living in close quarters. Dr. Rajiv Bhatia, assistant professor of medicine at Stanford and former deputy health officer for San Francisco, says the transmission of the virus into those households came largely from the workplace, from people who were classified as essential workers.
The data would show which jobs are particularly troublesome and help determine whether sufficient steps are being taken to protect the workers. And it might trigger a reevaluation of whether the reopening risk is worth it for some professions.
For example, some questioned early on why Newsom quickly reopened construction job sites. His administration insisted doing so would not endanger worker safety. It was a politically driven decision with no data provided to support it.
Some evidence suggests that keeping builders operating was dangerous. Santa Clara County early on found outbreaks at a dozen construction sites. And one community group in heavily Latino East Oakland found that 68% of construction workers it tested on its own had COVID-19.
There was significant early focus nationally on meatpacking plants because the number of cases was so large that it couldn’t be ignored. But locally, after the Tesla automotive plant in Fremont was allowed to reopen, more than 400 coronavirus cases were reported. We only learned that months later from the Alameda County data ordered released.
This is the sort of data that Newsom, Ghaly and all the county health officers should have been collecting statewide and making publicly available for the past year. It should not take legislation like Glazer’s, but that seems the only alternative.